Success Story

Faculty Success Story

No undergraduate leaveswithout a passport

March 12, 2009

Professor Frank DuBois developed a fascination with international business at a young age. As a high-school student, he worked in a Volkswagen repair shop and struggled to install parts that had been manufactured in Brazil into German-made cars.

“They didn’t fit very well,” he recalls. “But it was all a function of price. I became interested in the global assembly line and the whole concept of outsourcing.”

DuBois went on to receive a Ph.D. in International Business. He has taught at Kogod for 20 years and currently chairs the International Business Department, where one of his core philosophies is that international experience is critical to a business education.

DuBois has lead multiple Kogod trips to Brazil, China and other destinations, where he encourages students to examine business transactions that cross national borders, and all the regulatory, cultural and environmental considerations that must go into such deals. When he is not teaching, he’s promoting the international aspect of the business school curriculum. DuBois was instrumental in Kogod’s requirement that all undergraduate business students have some international immersion experience before they can graduate. He urges graduate students to do the same.

“It can be a short one-week travel course, or a semester abroad, but everybody graduates with a passport. And spring break in Cancun doesn’t count.”

DuBois understands that not all Kogod students will go on to work in international business, especially right after graduation, but he says the focus that Kogod puts on doing business in an increasingly global environment offers students more career options over the long run.

“Students leave here with a heightened sensitization to the global aspects of doing business,” he says.